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A Front Row Seat for the Cultural Revolution: We Had the Great Wall To Ourselves

by Beverley

June 27th, 2013

Chapter Six
WE HAD THE GREAT WALL TO OURSELVES
Part One

The Great Wall was the last thing the astronauts saw from space, and the first thing our gang of ten wanted to see in China. The road out of town was lined with newly planted rows of bare trees. A few bicycles, trucks and horse drawn carts carrying hay speckled the long straight route. We bounced past deep excavations for a new part of the Peking subway. I heard about the subway but was never allowed to see it. Rumors were that it was truly an entire city underground to be used in case of attack. This tied into the rumors that the football field wide street upon which our hotel was located had been built to tremendous width to allow war planes to use it as a runway in case of trouble.

Heavy traffic on a Main Street in China during Cultural Revolution.

A cement mountain and dilapidated mining equipment appeared in the distance. We passed factories, the brick walls surrounding them topped with jagged pieces of glass sticking into the mortar. The glass sparkled quite innocently, quite prettily, in the light that filtered through the smoke and fine dust floating trough the resultant smog. Was it to keep people out, or in? We’d been lectured daily that since the revolution China was free of crime.

On this long drive we saw one of the only two gas stations we found in China — two bright red pumps at the side of the road. The other one was near the International Club in the foreign legation area.

A Hollywood spectacle suddenly sped past our lumbering bus. It was a fleet of black limousines. What a surprising sight. No one would tell us who it was. However, the flag of the Congo was flying out front of our hotel that day in honor of the visiting president of the Congo, so it was a safe guess that we’d just been left in the dust of his entourage.

We’d been driving a long time when the rest room stop was made. Now none of us were expecting a sparkling clean Chevron station. But the wooden shed where a long splintery plank with four holes set over four deep foul-smelling holes in the earth did come as a surprise. We were instructed that time was limited so four of us had to go at a time, or as numbers worked out with only members of the same sex participating at one time. What did we do? We hiked up our mink and broadtail coats, unzipped our trousers, pulled them down and climbed aboard. What a photograph that would have made.

Hygienics were attended to with good old American Kleenex and those antiseptic pads called “Wash & Dries”. Our purses and pockets were filled the little sealed packets of them at all times. Returning to the heated bus after our freezing bathroom adventure, conversation turned to the penetrating cold the Chinese were enduring in their padded cotton jackets and Mao suits as a chilling wind blew off the Gobi Desert.

“When I was a little girl in China,” Jayne explained, “my mother would ask the servants how cold it was outside. They would reply that it was a two coat day or a three coat day.” This day Jayne was obviously dressed for three coat weather wearing red and white striped long underwear, a plaid suit with silk blouse and two sweaters under it, her ankle length camel hair coat under her hooded camel color mink coat. And of course gloves, boots, scarf and beret. —to be continued.

Chapter 1: Part 1 Part 2
Chapter 2: Part 1 Part 2 Part 3
Chapter 3: Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4
Chapter 4: Part 1
Chapter 5: Part 1 Part 2 Part 3
Chapter 6: Part 1 Part 2 Part 3
Chapter 7: Part 1
Chapter 8: Part 1 Part 2
Chapter 9: Part 1 Part 2
Chapter 10: Part 1
Chapter 11: Part 1 Part 2
Chapter 12: Part 1
Chapter 13: Part 1

By The Way
This blog was started to sell my new book and I keep going off on other topics. Please do check out The Beautiful Lady Was A Palace Eunuch at Amazon.com

Acknowledgement:
Kathleen Fetner, Technical Advisor and Friend

Categories Books, My Life
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A Front Row Seat for the Cultural Revolution: The Legendary Capital Of China

by Beverley

February 25th, 2013

Chapter Five
THE LEGENDARY CAPITAL OF CHINA
Part 1

Once the fair ended we all boarded a night train to Peking, a hard-back night train. This meant we sat on once-polished uncomfortable wooden seats in an unheated dimly lighted railroad car. We had departed with a royal sendoff from our Tientsin Hotel. Everyone who’d served us, spied on us, had any sort of seen or unseen contact with us, was there to wave goodbye. Comrade Sung stayed with us all the way to the train. I think he’d grown to like us. He’d enjoyed the mental challenge of trying to outwit us in his nightly inquisitions, finding himself against commensurate minds. He stood on the platform waving goodbye until totally veiled in steam and darkness. The composure Sung displayed at the end led our cynical minds to presume all the completed resumes, the results of his endless hours of questioning and spying, had been deemed satisfactory by his superiors and were now in the hands of the proper authorities in Peking. Peking was now well informed and prepared for our arrival.

Traffic on main street in Peking looked like this in 1975. Today it is bumper to bumper.

Our railroad car was filled with young soldiers in thin green cotton uniforms with red lapels and red stars on their hats. Their belongings spilled over the netting overhead racks. They had packages, probably sent along by mothers or wives, wrapped in reed matting, khaki color bags, enamel pans filled with fruit and garlic (pans to be used for bathing later), burlap bags with hidden necessities, and string bags with indiscernible contents. And soldier had a rifle casually tossed up there as well.

Somehow Steve Allen and I got separated from the rest of our gang. There wasn’t anyone else in our car except the soldiers and the two of us. There were no railroad attendants or guards. This fact, coupled with all those rifles, didn’t exactly create a “sit back and let us do the driving” sort of happy traveler. Trying not to dwell on those rifles I concentrated on how each young man could carry so many diverse items in those string bags. Among items I could make out were an enamel drinking cup, tooth brush and tooth paste, changes of shirts and underwear, books, and bags of sweets. When we arrived at the end of our trip and bamboo poles were retrieved from beneath all the bundles I was fascinated to watch as everything was carried off most easily dangling from the two ends of the bamboo poles, just as the Chinese have transported everything from night soil to gold ore for centuries.

Steve and I were cold in that barren railroad car even though we were enveloped in camels’ hair, cashmere and fur. The young soldiers conversely appeared quite comfortable in their light weight padded cotton uniforms. One young soldier a couple of rows in front and across the aisle from us kept looking back at Steve and me rather menacingly. Thinking of those rifles overhead this made us quite uncomfortable. Then about an hour out of Tientsin, after watching us continuously, he stood up and reached into the rack above his head. I was holding my breath and Steve definitely wasn’t cracking any jokes. To my relief the soldier’s hands passed right over his rifle. He unzipped his canvas bag and rummaged inside, just long enough for my imagination to conjure up secreted Central American machetes and Middle Eastern daggers. But what he pulled out was one of the colorful big green thermoses decorated with floral decals that had become part of our daily Tientsin survival. He carefully poured some of the hot tea into the thermos lid, not easy on a train moving rapidly over tracks that appeared to have been laid about the same time the Great Wall was being built in the north. Slowly he walked across the aisle and handed the cup to Steve, indicating with his free hand that Steve and I were to share the cup of steaming liquid. Our shivering smiles must have been an adequate reward for his sympathetic kindness to two enemy strangers. It was a beautiful example of human kindness and I felt quite ashamed for having been suspicious of the young soldier’s intentions.

Thoroughly warmed inside by both the hot liquid and the warm gesture, Steve and I settled into relaxed conversation. This noisy train couldn’t be bugged. He told me about a train poem he’d written that is included in an English book of famous train poems when he was young. Unfortunately the name of the book is now forgotten. We talked about family and friends, our cameras and the types of film we’d brought. We felt safe, but not safe enough to talk about China.

The seats were so uncomfortable and we couldn’t see much outside the window. Soft moonlight and steam drifting back from our old fashioned steam engine created strange silhouettes of the bare trees and darkened villages.

Our bodies were cold and sore at the end of the several hour ride. Stiffened fingers were slow gathering up our gear. The young soldiers in their padded cotton uniforms however had no problems pulling down their carry-ons, looping the handles over either end of their bamboo poles and trotting off into the cavernous Peking train station. Possibly it was enthusiasm that motivated their rapid departure. The majority of these young peasant recruits had never been to a city before.

The Peking Train Station was a product of Mao’s Great Leap Forward architecture, built in 1958. It was big and cold and unwelcoming, the ceilings outlandishly high to make individuals feel small and insignificant. Tall pillars of granite, marble balustrades, long escalators and huge paintings broke the space.

One tremendous painting portrayed a paternal young Chairman Mao on a grassy hilltop, leading smiling happy peasants and minority people waving flags, rifles, picks. And charging up the hill towards them ran happy recruits coming to join the revolutionary forces. It was a sort of “Uncle Sam Wants You!” recruiting poster Chinese style. And there were the ever-present, very big, always smiling portraits of Chairman Mao.

Like Gulliver’s Travels, tiny people hovered beneath the benevolently smiling giant. Khaki-clad soldiers sprawled over their rope-tied cloth bags and reed bales of gear, peasants trotted past with treasured belongings suspended from shoulder balanced bamboo poles, wrinkled old women in quilted black silk jackets, black pants, black velvet turbans touched with a bit of jade and tiny black slippers on their bound feet reclined on their bags of belongings. Enchanting tiny children so bundled up in quilted clothing they looked like toddling Russian tea cozies clung to parents. Their little bare derrieres were exposed through slits in the back of their trousers, a Chinese provision for potty training. These and a sea of indistinguishable blue quilted Mao coats and caps with people inside filled the gigantic station waiting room.

This was our first real sample of the magnitude of the masses of people who could assemble in any one place in China. As Americans we couldn’t really imagine such numbers all crushed together. There could be no comparison to record crowds in their orderly rows of seats at a Super Bowl. There each one still retained their individuality. — To be continued…

By The Way
This blog was started to sell my new book and I keep going off on other topics. Please do check out The Beautiful Lady Was A Palace Eunuch at Amazon.com

Acknowledgement:
Kathleen Fetner, Technical Advisor and Friend

Categories Books, My Life
Comments (1)

A Front Row Seat for the Cultural Revolution: The Bug In The Light Fixture Couldn’t Fly

by Beverley

February 7th, 2013

Chapter Four
THE BUG IN THE LIGHT FIXTURE COULDN’T FLY

It had taken a few days, but we were learning the rules of life in China during the Cultural Revolution although they frequently didn’t make any sense to us. We were cautious, actually on guard at all times. Any critical conversation was reserved for moments when we might be walking alone for a bit of exercise, hopefully out of the hearing of whomever was following us.

Although, on occasion we used the conditions we knew existed to our own advantage. We all knew there were listening devices hidden somewhere in our rooms. We’d been warned of this condition before we left home. I found the one in my bedroom the first night when I turned on the lights. There in a vintage frosted glass-domed light fixture in the middle of the ceiling of my bedroom a little black listening device showed up quite clearly. The occasion when I used knowledge of this device to my own advantage concerned the one thin ragged towel and washcloth allotted me that had not been changed for four nights. While I didn’t expect the big fluffy bath towels I enjoy at home, I did feel it was time for a fresh dry replacement of what I had been using. Having whispered to Marge earlier in the evening that I needed her help, after dinner I led her to my room and stood her directly under the light fixture. Directing my words upward to the little black supposedly hidden device, which Marge could see clearly, I announced loudly, “Can you believe it Marge. They are trying so hard to do everything as nicely as possible for us, yet they only give me one thin little bath towel that hasn’t been changed for four days and is getting mildew.”

“I’ve had the same problem,” she replied, grasping the role I’d intended her to play.

We kept up idle conversation about the day’s work at the carpet fair, checking our watches to time the expected results of our experiment. Within four minutes the door burst open and a young attendant tore into the room. Two large clean towels and two washcloths were rushed wordlessly into my bathroom, the limp remnants of the previous four days disappearing with the retreating attendant.

Dinner conversation was guarded too. We were all convinced that we were exposed to ears other than those of employees who supposedly spoke no English at all. We talked about the carpets and the Fair. We discussed how the stir fried vegetables at this meal deferred from the ones at the previous meal — a different cut of the carrots, broccoli instead of cabbage, an unfamiliar mushroom.

Observations about guests at other tables were allowed. We noted the lowering level of the contents of the Nescafe jar always sitting on one table, or the bottle of red wine that went down by only an inch per meal at another.

Of particular interest to us was the destiny of a tiny almost valueless coin that rested in a glass dish on our table three meals a day. Evidently one of us had dropped the coin unknowingly the first day. Or they thought one of us had. So there it sat, every meal, as dependable as the late night visits of Comrade Sung.

Our last night in Tientsin someone finally braved the issue and asked the elderly white-coated waiter who spoke some English from pre-1949 days when he’d worked in an English-speaking home and had served us every meal. He explained that the little coin would be kept for six months. If no one claimed it by then the coin would be put into the employee’s fund.

We’d been warned of such situations. There were tales from returning Europeans of being chased down a train station platform by a hotel employee waving torn panty hose or a beaten up discarded bra that had been retrieved from a hotel room waste basket. Or less embarrassingly one report concerned having a bus halted until a bicyclist brought some rumpled papers found under a desk. It really was quite impossible to throw away anything short of banana skins or tangerine peels, without finding them neatly folded on top of the dresser the next day.

By The Way
This blog was started to sell my new book and I keep going off on other topics. Please do check out The Beautiful Lady Was A Palace Eunuch at Amazon.com

Acknowledgement:
Kathleen Fetner, Technical Advisor and Friend

Categories Books, My Life
Comments (1)

A Front Row Seat for the Cultural Revolution: Stockholm Syndrome in Tientsin (part 4)

by Beverley

January 29th, 2013

Chapter Three
STOCKHOLM SYNDROME IN TIENTSIN
Part Four

Then came the moment we’d all dreamed of — Comrade Sung had arranged for us to go to the local antique store, state owned of course. Knowing nothing about Chinese porcelain at the time, I picked up one piece after another and tried to ask my antique dealer friends with great expertise if they were worth the high prices being asked. No one took the time to answer me. Their hunt was on. Finally I gave up and sat on a small chair in a corner watching my frenzied companions shop.

I became aware of an elderly man across the room watching me. He stood there in his blue Mao suit, his hands tucked into opposite sleeves in the style of aristocrats in pre-liberation China. He just kept watching me. So I watched him. Slowly one hand came out of the sleeve and it appeared he was signaling me to follow him. With nothing else to do, I did.

I followed him up a narrow, dangerously in need of repair, old wooden staircase lighted by a single bulb on the second floor. Arriving there without incident I realized that this kind old man had brought me into Tientsin’s Aladdin’s cave of antiques. What they were fighting over downstairs was Walmart while I was upstairs in Cartier. The walls were hung with ancient scrolls and calligraphy. Heaped in piles wherever you looked were rolls of ancient scrolls edged and bound in beautiful old silks. Somehow my new friend had understood I knew about paintings but had no knowledge of porcelains. Or was he just kind?

He let me wander, and unroll, and feast my eyes. Then when he could hear business was being concluded downstairs, he went to a shelf and pulled out a silk-covered portfolio and handed it to me. He pointed to the portfolio, then to my purse, then to me. In other words, buy it! Peeking inside I discovered 12 beautiful very valuable old gauche paintings of Lohans (religious men) in representative legends pertaining to their particular titles.

Cautiously edging back down the aged staircase, gripping my treasure, I reentered the room and realized no one had noticed my absence. No one noticed the silken portfolio I presented at the desk where the clerk worked with abacus figuring how much I owed for the 12 paintings, the equivalent of $48 US for all. Another clerk brought a basin of hot water so we could wash off the ancient dust from the antiques we’d been handling.

However, it turned out Jayne, Marge and I didn’t have the proper Chinese currency to pay for our purchases so we were rushed into the minibus which sped off through a totally unfamiliar area of Tientsin to the main branch of the Bank of China. It was a huge old building, of British design, and we guessed it had once housed a British bank. Everything was frighteningly quite inside the high ceilinged building where great numbers of young Chinese worked silently at the long rows of desks. No typewriters clicked. There were no computers, no calculators. No phones rang. There was no light chatter between co-workers. Only the sound of beads sliding up and down the abacus could be heard in that vast room.

I studied the European detailing of the church-like structure as our guide led us over to a counter where foreign money transactions were handled. “Which of you ladies is Mrs. Jackson?” the stern man behind the counter queried in heavily accented English.

Chills traversed my spine. An unknown building in an unknown part of town. Our visit was totally unplanned. Of course, this was China during the Cultural Revolution. There were spies everywhere. Our every move was known and recorded.

I acknowledged my identity fearing the worst as my fellow travelers distanced themselves as far as possible from me.

“You lost your gloves this morning Mrs. Jackson,” he announced. I checked my coat pockets and purse and he was right. “You will find them with the attendant on the fifth floor of Tientsin Hotel Number One when you return there.” And I did.

It wasn’t until our group began to go separate ways some days later in Peking that I had the joy of showing my treasure when we all played a sort of show and tell after dinner. As I took out each of the 12 beautiful paintings of Lohans there was silence. I wished that the kind old man from the antique shop could have been there to share my triumph. [… and so ends chapter 3. Next week we start chapter 4, “The Bug in the Light Fixture Couldn’t Fly “]

By The Way
This blog was started to sell my new book and I keep going off on other topics. Please do check out The Beautiful Lady Was A Palace Eunuch at Amazon.com

Acknowledgement:
Kathleen Fetner, Technical Advisor and Friend

Categories Books, Uncategorized
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A Front Row Seat for the Cultural Revolution: Stockholm Syndrome in Tientsin (part 3)

by Beverley

January 13th, 2013

Chapter Three
STOCKHOLM SYNDROME IN TIENTSIN
Part Three

Comrade Sung’s built-in radar must have told him we were getting bored and edgy spending all the time at the fair. So he produced a mini bus and took us on a city tour. One thousand years ago Tientsin was only a sea bank, so its history is only about 800 years old. Before liberation (1949) it was a semi-feudal, semi-colonial city. Traces of architecture from that period remained such as the Dutch building built by the French we’d seen the night before. Tudor beams adorned buildings in the former British sector, brightly colored tiles and grillwork were found in the Italian section. The former club for Italian colonists was now the Worker’s Palace and quite elegant. Nowhere were there signs of flower gardens but some window sills held pots of wild clover.

We passed people lined up to get tickets for the evening dance show. Admission tickets were thirty cents. Torrie asked, “May we go to the dance show tonight Comrade Sung?” “No!” came the Comrades anticipated reply. No reason given. We just were not allowed to go to the theatre. Possibly this was the fear of allowing us to be in middle of crowds where we were unprotected. Both sides of the wide boulevard we traveled on were hung with clotheslines holding strands of straw looped round and round. They’d been hung out to dry. Several blocks of natural color, then blocks of red, next blue, then orange. Rows of children pushed carts down the main street, collecting manure left behind from those morning horse drawn delivery carts. Later they would deliver it to peasants working outside the city in the fields. This was one way to teach children to respect the peasants. However those peasants got cheated out of a lot of manure by the horse owners who tied little cloth bags under the tails of their horses.

Stopping at the Tientsin Water Park we were allowed to get out and take photos. It was a pretty winter scene with ice crusting the lakes and canals. Bare trees were wrapped in protective straw mats, and boats were out of the water for winter, piled up in the main square.

Back in the bus we engaged the guides in casual conversation. We learned they had read Shakespeare and Mark Twain. One girl said she truly liked Huckleberry Finn. “He very bad boy,” she giggled.

We were even allowed a visit to Tientsin’s big department store this day. But as usual we were being watched. The chain of spies was set up by our guide. At the first counter we approached in the store he subtly tugged at the back of a young man’s jacket. From then on this young man, or others who looked like him, were always a slight distance ahead and behind us to move crowds away from us when they began to gather and clear elevators of all other shoppers so we rode up and down in empty elevators. However, this was all done for a good reason. Westerners who looked like us were a great novelty in Tientsin at that time. This was proven to us when we left the department store and discovered curious mobs had nearly turned our small bus over. — to be continued

By The Way
This blog was started to sell my new book and I keep going off on other topics. Please do check out The Beautiful Lady Was A Palace Eunuch at Amazon.com

Acknowledgement:
Kathleen Fetner, Technical Advisor and Friend

Categories Books, My Life
Comments (1)

A Front Row Seat for the Cultural Revolution: Stockholm Syndrome in Tientsin (part 2)

by Beverley

December 27th, 2012

Chapter Three
STOCKHOLM SYNDROME IN TIENTSIN
Part Two

Since the taxis weren’t waiting for us when we finished Steve, Herb Cole, Rosa and a nice Danish man, Peter with an unpronounceable last name, and I decided to walk a bit. Peter somehow had become assimilated into our gang of ten by the second day, having met and liked him at the carpet fair. We were no sooner out of the alley than the crowds began to appear from the dark shadows to follow us. This was nothing official, just curious citizens looking at strange people, Red haired Steve at six foot three definitely stood out. Jayne, still down with flu back at the hotel, would have made a bit of a statement as well.

We walked past shops with subtly lighted window displays. One had a tiny child’s suit with panda bear appliqués and a little hat with ears. At a movie house Rosa inquired about the film playing. She was told it was the story of a great hero of the people’s revolution who worked in the oil fields of China. Two darling little girls with black braids took a special interest in me. This was to be my first chance to give out some of the marigold seeds my friend David Burpee, the father of the flower seed industry in America, had given me to take to China. Although we’d been warned that the Chinese would accept absolutely no gifts, to prove the self-sufficiency achieved through their revolution, David felt flower seeds would be acceptable. I thought tomato or squash seeds to get something extra to eat would have been a better gift. But he was hung up on marigolds — even spent a great deal of money lobbying unsuccessfully in Washington D.C. to make marigolds our national flower. So I went off to China with 50 packets of marigold seeds, marigolds the flowers of friendship.

Reaching into my oversized travel bag I pulled out two packages of the seeds and tried to give them to the little girls. Suddenly one of the crowd following us spoke up in perfect English. “The children have everything they need,” he said politely but firmly. And then he added, “Also they would not grow in our climate.” The little girls looked so disappointed. But I got the message and 50 packets of marigold seeds were left on my hotel bed at the Hilton Hotel in Tokyo before I returned home.

Fortunately at that point attention was diverted from my marigold problem when two bikes collided nearby. The men riding them stopped and started checking damage as though they were going to file insurance claims. Peter and Herb grew tired of the crowds and returned to the restaurant. Rosa, Steve and I wandered across the street to look more closely at a building built in traditional Dutch architectural style. Rosa asked someone what it was and they said it had been built by the French. At that point we realized the crowds surrounding us had grown very large and were moving in so close we were facing potential problems. It was still a friendly smiling crowd, but we decided it was time to return quickly to the restaurant. Rosa, trying to keep things friendly, announced in Chinese that Steve should get a long-eared fur Mongolian hat like several boys in the crowd wore. A few people laughed.

Suddenly the man who had declined the seeds started pushing the crowd away from us, speaking severely in Chinese. They dispersed quickly. Heading straight for the restaurant we found our group huddled in a little room rather like the Parisian concierge quarters of days long past. Jerry informed us the police had been called to clear the street. One official ran inside and shouted into the phone to get taxis there fast. We were forced to remain crushed together in the tiny room until the taxis came tearing up. As our taxis drove off the worrisome threatening crowd that had so alarmed the head cadre lined the sidewalk across from the restaurant grinning and waving goodbye to us. Didn’t the officials realize that even if we had been subversives with terrorist plans, we’d been rendered quite harmless with the ten course meal and seven to ten dumplings we’d consumed such a short time before!

Awakening to a new day in Tientsin was quite an exceptional awakening. The whistles of the steam engines passing through blended with the horse hoofs clattering in the streets. So many deliveries were made in horse-drawn carts each morning. As the first signs of dawn threw light, a bare tree in front of the factory across the street stood in silhouette like a Chinese paper cut out. A lone girl practiced her tai chi exercises each morning on that factory roof at sunrise. —to be continued

By The Way
This blog was started to sell my new book and I keep going off on other topics. Please do check out The Beautiful Lady Was A Palace Eunuch at Amazon.com

Acknowledgement:
Kathleen Fetner, Technical Advisor and Friend

Categories Books, My Life
Comments (2)

A Front Row Seat for the Cultural Revolution: The First Annual Tientsin Carpet Fair (Part 3)

by Beverley

December 9th, 2012

Chapter Two
The First Annual Tientsin Carpet Fair
Part Three

One day when we arrived back at the hotel for lunch, I spotted two Chinese boys playing badminton in a small paved area near the hotel. Wandering over to watch, one of the boys laughingly held out his racquet to me. Throwing caution to the thick black smoggy wind, I took it. A bit of exercise was much more appealing than lunch. Badminton happens to be one sport where I’ve always been able to more than hold my own. But this was the People’s Republic of China so I gave my cute young challenger enough of a fight to let him see he was playing a worthy opponent. But of course I subtly gave him the last point.

Totally engrossed in the change of pace, and etiquette of our game, I hadn’t noticed the crowd gathering to see the strange woman with strawberry blond hair. Westerners were a great novelty in Tientsin, unlike Peking and Shanghai where foreign diplomats and business people were rather commonplace. Word had spread fast and a very large crowd surrounded us by the time the police arrive to clear them out. Comrade Sung arrived with the police and the crowd dispersed fast. Needless to say he had much to say to me at our evening meeting beginning with, “I forbid you to ever play badminton again!” Then he went on about visitors in China must abide by the rules. In all the material I had to prepare me for my trip I couldn’t remember a single reference to playing badminton but I let him rant on.

One evening we decided to have a cocktail party. Helene volunteered her suite — she somehow had landed a bedroom and little sitting room. Everyone was instructed to bring their own glass. Steve brought his own chair. However, he spent most of the party on the floor with his legs over the chair and hands behind his head mentally composing a new song. While known primarily as an actor, TV star and comedian, Steve Allen was a jazz musician, composer of many hundred songs including the very popular “I’ll be Home for Christmas”, author of books of poetry, fiction, mysteries, juvenile books, autobiographies, travel, screen plays, movie scripts, TV plays, a man of seemingly limitless talents. Jerry and Louise Fisher and I brought two bottles of champagne which cost us about $3.00. That’s exactly what it was worth. Herb Cole brought a bottle of Chinese red plum wine no one even tried. The safest drinks in China at that time were tea and orange pop. If you ordered orange juice for breakfast, you got orange pop. In fact, if you ordered anything anytime that wasn’t understood there was a pretty good chance it would be orange pop that was served. Tea was accessible 24 hours a day. A very large thermos of boiling water was left outside our rooms each morning. And tea leaves could be purchased at the “gift shop” downstairs. Those thermos bottles appeared to be quite flimsy but they were possibly one of the greatest Chinese inventions since gunpowder. Water could stay boiling hot in them for up to two days.

Lying in bed the next morning waiting for my 7:00 call my thoughts wandered. A French woman’s comment, “The Tientsin Fair wasn’t ready for your crowd. You all have turned into the best show in town!” The girls guides at the fair describing the years they spent laboring and living in the caves of Yunnan and how much they respected the hardworking peasants there. We hadn’t heard any news for days. We knew nothing beyond our own little group’s activities. What were those gunshots I’d heard late two nights before? It wasn’t a dream. Herb had heard them too.

A visit to a carpet factory broke into the monotony of the fair. The factory employed over 1,000 workers. They were a healthy happy looking crew who worked from eight in the morning until noon. Two hours were allowed for lunch and a nap, then back to work from two until six in the evening.

Four girls worked at each loom. They would pull and knot wool with their left hand, cutting, to the exact size needed with a small cleaver in the right hand. Embossing was done with the newly invented electric scissors. There was great pride in these new electric scissors as the old scissors crippled the hands of those who used them continually. This factory visit, like every visit to any business, ended with a meeting with the heads of the factory. At these meetings we were asked for suggestions on how they could improve and of course included much Communist Party propaganda from our hosts.

George Bush and Steve Allen in Tientsin

Arriving at the carpet factory we ran into George H. W. Bush, chief of the U.S. Legation in Peking, who was just leaving. He appeared very happy to see fellow Americans, especially since he and the Allens were old friends. He was warm and friendly and immediately extended an invitation to visit Barbara and him when we got to Peking. Although it was the Allens who were his friends, he was very good about including all of us in his conversation. Little did we realize this friendly very attractive man we were talking to would soon be president of the United States? Speaking of which I must say the small American flags on the front of his official black limo waving in the Chinese breeze as he drove off looked mighty good to us.

Our lives were fairly well confined to the fair area and Tientsin Hotel Number One for our first five days in China. Jane and Rosa’s negotiations for their carpet purchases were confusing, annoying and generally hopeless. When the two of them could finally agree on something, negotiations would be stalled by the Comrades Chou and Chen who sat across the table from us at all business meetings. Rosa was the big problem. Every time the order appeared set, she found a new rug she wanted, had a new list, or just plain disappeared. We were learning to say “Do you know where Rosa is?” in Chinese, Rumanian, Bulgarian and Hungarian. And we could understand “No” in all these languages.

This ends the second chapter of “A Front Row Seat for the Cultural Revolution.” In a few days we will continue the adventure in Tientsin as we begin chapter three.

By The Way
This blog was started to sell my new book and I keep going off on other topics. Please do check out The Beautiful Lady Was A Palace Eunuch at Amazon.com

Acknowledgement:
Kathleen Fetner, Technical Advisor and Friend

Categories Books, My Life
Comments (1)

A Front Row Seat for the Cultural Revolution: The First Annual Tientsin Carpet Fair (Part 2)

by Beverley

November 13th, 2012

Chapter Two
The First Annual Tientsin Carpet Fair
Part Two

The young language students were quite delightful. It was a great novelty for them to be able to practice the English they were studying with real English-speaking Americans. They smiled at us when Comrade Sung couldn’t see, giggled at anything slightly humorous, and eyes lit up whenever we came out with a bit of slang or unusual idiom.

Steve Allen getting checked out

Steve Allen arrived a couple of days after us. He had been committed to perform at a charity benefit two days after we were to leave for China and wasn’t about to disappoint the organization. Comrade Sung and the students really had a challenge when they took on the multi-talented and very funny Steve Allen. His answers to questions could be most unpredictable, to the total confusion of Comrade Sung and delight of the language students who knew more English than the Comrade.

Jayne and Rosa both came down with a flu bug several days after our arrival but tried not to give in to it. One night, after a particularly arduous day at the carpet fair, Jayne went straight to bed. I decided to take a big bowl of chicken vegetable soup up to her room after we finished dinner about 6:00 in the evening.

Room service definitely wasn’t available in Tientsin Hotel Number One during the Cultural Revolution. Maneuvering a large bowl full of hot liquid and vegetables up five floors in a swaying ancient cage elevator proved to be an interesting challenge.
Inside the sick room, after first knocking, I found the invalid entertaining five of the young language students. They were sitting on her bed, the only chair in the room and on the floor. They had snuck in, unknown to the dreaded Comrade Sung, for “slang lessons”. Deep into the night, Jayne resting against several of the lead-filled pillows the hotel supplied, and I on the floor, taught “so long”, “see you around” and other innocent little gems to the enthusiastic young Chinese. A couple of days later, walking near the hotel, a voice called out to me, “Hi Pal!” It was of course one of our students.

On one occasion Steve Allen was speaking very slowly and clearly to a young man who was studying English. “You speak English good,” the young man exclaimed.

We each found our own way to cope with language problems. My worry was leaving a morning wakeup call each night. I’d write very large on a piece of paper “7:00 Room 203” and take it down to the formidable two attendants who sat in a little kiosk near the elevator spying on us and guarding the heavy keys we needed to get into our rooms, unlike the Chinese who entered by magic. Then I’d show them 7:00 on my wrist watch. The charade continued with me resting my head on my hands, closing my eyes pretending to sleep, snoring a bit, then knocking on the wall. It worked very well, except for the night one of the attendants asked after my performance, “You want me to wake you up at 7:00 in the mornings again?”

We were transported each day, for five days, to the First Tientsin Carpet Fair in buses, and bussed back to the hotel for lunch. Then back to the fair for the rest of the day. Jayne and Rosa’s negotiations for carpet purchases went on endlessly. And since I got into China under the guise of a secretary to the newly opened Allen-Wu Carpet Company I had to be there pen and paper in hand. This fair was our first experience with the “no one can make any decision what-so-ever without consulting someone else who is somewhere else” policy in the PRC in February 1975. There were interminable sessions at long tables, drinking tea and inhaling the cigarette smoke of our hosts, who also made frequent use of the ever-present brass spittoons. And through all of this, hour after hour, a pianist at a Steinway played. Every now and then, in our honor, he would play a very loud rendition of Home on the Range. —to be continued

By The Way
This blog was started to sell my new book and I keep going off on other topics. Please do check out The Beautiful Lady Was A Palace Eunuch at Amazon.com

Acknowledgement:
Kathleen Fetner, Technical Advisor and Friend

Categories Books, My Life
Comments (2)

A Front Row Seat for the Cultural Revolution: The First Annual Tientsin Carpet Fair

by Beverley

October 11th, 2012

Chapter Two
The First Annual Tientsin Carpet Fair
Part One

The pretentious big shiny red and gold invitation Rosa’s influence had secured for me that had brought me to China during the Cultural Revolution read: “China National Native Produce and Animal By-Products Branch, Peking Branch and Talien Branch cordially invite Mrs. Beverley Jackson to the Chinese Carpets Fair 1975 in Tientsin.” Thirty-four years later I still can’t explain why animal by-products groups hosted a carpet fair, other than the fact that the carpets were made of wool or silk. I suppose if you stretched logic a bit a silkworm might qualify as an animal. But the timing was right for me to arrange my life and work in Santa Barbara to allow for a few weeks absence for such a rare opportunity so I didn’t question anything. I accepted the invitation to the Tientsin Carpet Fair immediately.

Tientsin Hotel Number One was old. It was as clean as any place could be where brooms and dustpans are the substitute for vacuums when cleaning tired worn carpets. But this was a big exciting adventure and things like dirty carpets didn’t really matter. Our group quite liked the quaintness of Tientsin Hotel Number One. I was deeply saddened to hear it totally collapsed in the big earthquake that hit Tientsin the following year, but happy it hadn’t occurred while we were in residence.

My room had two dark metal twin beds and quilts in white muslin duvet covers with big square cut-outs mid-quilt to show the pink quilt inside. The steam radiator worked, and so did the unglamorous but western style toilet. The hot water supply was occasional at best. The bed linens and limited towels were thin with age and wear, but clean. All meals taken at the hotel were quite good. The first night Marge urged all of us to get a sealed bottle of water in the dining room to take to our rooms. So we all followed her lead and got bottles of water like Marge’s. Traversing the lobby heading for the elevator holding our Chinese water bottles we drew rather quizzical stares. In our rooms it only took one sniff, not even a sip, to understand the reason for those quizzical stares. Somewhere along the way the word water had been translated into strong undrinkable white wine.

There were questionable locks on the doors to our rooms and no Chinese inhibitions about entering without knocking. Delivery of a thermos of boiling water, clean laundry being returned, the nightly inquisitional visits from Comrade Sung — all entered no matter the state of dress or undress we might be in without hesitation and totally unannounced. More than once I was caught stark naked but no one blinked. Well, no one but me!

Comrade Sung appeared to be responsible for us. Although our original thinking was he was checking us out for what harm we might do to China, I eventually realized he was equally concerned that nothing bad happens to the rare visitors from America. There were elements that might profit from an unpleasant incident involving Americans in China. The Bamboo Curtain was just beginning to rise a tiny bit and not everyone in China approved.

Each night after we returned from dinner — about the time we had all our clothes off and were ready to bathe — Comrade Sung would burst into one of our rooms accompanied by two young language students from the foreign language school in Tientsin. Two different students every night. “Mrs. Jackson, why Mrs. Pollack wear white gloves all time?” “Mrs. Jackson, why Jerry Fisher do all talking and wife not talk much?” And in other rooms he had quite a few questions about Mrs. Jackson. “Why Mrs. Jackson have two coats? Who was Jacqueline she talks about? Her daughter is named Tracey.” (Jacqueline was my beloved German shepherd.) “Why Mrs. Jackson always want yoghurt for breakfast?” Reason for this was I’d been advised that the Chinese had learned to make delicious yoghurt from the Russians and it was a safe way to get calcium into my Chinese diet.

During one of his interrogations with me, quite amusingly Comrade Sung confirmed our suspicions that all our bags were carefully and cleverly searched while we were at the fair each day. “Mrs. Jackson,” he began. “Why Mrs. Allen have so many hairs?” It took a minute for me to understand. Some years previously actress Jayne Meadows Allen’s adored long-time hairdresser retired. After endless attempts to replace him, Jayne simply gave up and started covering her own beautiful natural red hair with red wigs. And she was traveling with five red wigs in her “locked” suitcases. —to be continued

By The Way
This blog was started to sell my new book and I keep going off on other topics. Please do check out The Beautiful Lady Was A Palace Eunuch at Amazon.com

Acknowledgement:
Kathleen Fetner, Technical Advisor and Friend

Categories Books, My Life
Comments (3)

A Front Row Seat for the Cultural Revolution: And So the Adventure Begins (Part 2)

by Beverley

October 7th, 2012

Chapter One
AND SO THE ADVENTURE BEGINS
Part Two

My flight to China took over 24 hours. We ran into a heavy snow storm that put us down in Anchorage, and kept us there until record snowfall abated in Tokyo. My plane seatmate was a U.S. military man who, during his temporary leave in the States, had been dramatically reunited with his wife on the popular “Truth or Consequences” TV show. The next day she told him she was divorcing him!

Two of our party, Helene Pollack and Herb Cole, had been told by their U.S. doctors that they wouldn’t need smallpox vaccination certificates. Immediately upon arrival in Hong Kong they were rushed into an office at the Airport. Helene came out rubbing her arm, clutching an official white form. Herb came out looking distraught. He didn’t get a shot because he still had a scab from his U. S. vaccination. But the nurse couldn’t give him a form like Helene’s. I suggested we adjust our itinerary to allow an extra half hour at every port of embarkation and debarkation for Herb’s vaccinations. He didn’t find me amusing.

Torrie Levy had her own crisis to cope with. Her hairdryer broke the first morning in Hong Kong and she didn’t want to continue the trip. She’d already lost her glasses on the plane from Los Angeles. Her mother Marge Levy had lived through 30 years of these crises with Torrie and carried on unconcerned.

The two days in Hong Kong involved a lot of trips to China Travel Agency to get the endless documents required. And we all spent a good part of the last night making sure our customs declarations were accurate to the last U. S. penny or dime that might be found in a pocket or bottom of a purse. We’d been forcefully warned that there was no fooling around with money declarations going in or coming out of China. Pennies and dimes mattered to the precise Chinese.

And so, when that big old puffing steam engine pulled us as close to the border as it could go, we were ready for the short walk across the wooden bridge into the People’s Republic of China where the bright red flags were waving and Chairman Mao was smiling at us from a big gaudy painting.

Lugging carry-on bags, camera cases, coats and purse, I walked excitedly across the short bridge into the People’s Republic of China. Well, I didn’t exactly walk in. I fell in. There was a small step as I walked off the bridge that was invisible beneath all the things I was carrying and down I went.

Jayne Meadows next to a frozen lake at the Summer Palace

The customs people were smiling and cooperative, not at all what we’d been led to anticipate. Well, they were smiling and cooperative until they got to Rosa and Jayne. Jayne’s passport and visa photos had been taken without her red wig and she wasn’t getting into the People’s Republic of China without removing the wig she was wearing. However, Rosa was the real problem. Since we’d been helping her carry them we were aware that she was entering the People’s Republic of China with 11 suitcases and some extra boxes and bags. What we didn’t realize was she was bringing not only clothes for her family but TV sets, bathroom scales, meat grinders, and more. The customs officials were not happy with Rosa’s baggage and we seemed in for an endless delay. We’ll never know if her persistence wore them down, they just wanted her out of there, or Rosa said some magical name or words, but we were suddenly and most unexpectedly waved on.

An hour and a half later, after much tea served in tall quaintly decorated enamel cups with lids, and a good lunch of assorted dishes of stir fried vegetables, pork, chunks of deep fried fish, and rice we exited the way we’d entered. We had to catch a train to Canton. In Canton we’d catch the plane to Peking where we’d take a train to Tientsin, which is where we were actually going. Nobody had ever suggested that this trip would be easy. Approaching the memorable step of my entrance, we encountered four uniformed men on either side of the step. They were stationed there to direct our attention to the step. Their outstretched arms, all 16 of them, pointed directly towards that one small step. Foreigners didn’t often make the same mistake twice during the Cultural Revolution in China.

The train to Canton was clean and air conditioned. We were now passing through a tropical area, not unfamiliar to my Santa Barbara eye. Lush green foliage and crops, flowers, banana trees, house roofs of red tile. The Canton train station was a marvel of high ceilinged, Leningrad influenced, Art Nouveau. The vast waiting room, filled with eggplant colored imitation leather sofas, had marvelous etched glass windows. Glass curtains of lace with bamboo design stretched the length of the two story tall exterior windows. But we didn’t linger here. We were moved on to the airport and another waiting room and more tea. We drank a lot of tea in dining or waiting rooms before we finally got to Tientsin. The dining rooms all had wash basins near the door. Waiting rooms were decorated with small tangerine trees covered with tiny fruit in pots and lots of big red propaganda banners hanging everywhere.

And so ends the first chapter of “A Front Row Seat for the Cultural Revolution.” In a few days we start Chapter Two. You don’t want to miss it!

By The Way
This blog was started to sell my new book and I keep going off on other topics. Please do check out The Beautiful Lady Was A Palace Eunuch at Amazon.com

Acknowledgement:
Kathleen Fetner, Technical Advisor and Friend

Categories Books, My Life
Comments (6)

Archive for China – Page 2

A Front Row Seat for the Cultural Revolution: We Had the Great Wall To Ourselves

A Front Row Seat for the Cultural Revolution: The Legendary Capital Of China

A Front Row Seat for the Cultural Revolution: The Bug In The Light Fixture Couldn’t Fly

A Front Row Seat for the Cultural Revolution: Stockholm Syndrome in Tientsin (part 4)

A Front Row Seat for the Cultural Revolution: Stockholm Syndrome in Tientsin (part 3)

A Front Row Seat for the Cultural Revolution: Stockholm Syndrome in Tientsin (part 2)

A Front Row Seat for the Cultural Revolution: The First Annual Tientsin Carpet Fair (Part 3)

A Front Row Seat for the Cultural Revolution: The First Annual Tientsin Carpet Fair (Part 2)

A Front Row Seat for the Cultural Revolution: The First Annual Tientsin Carpet Fair

A Front Row Seat for the Cultural Revolution: And So the Adventure Begins (Part 2)

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